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 The fat lady hasn't sung yet, but if the October 24 DataFolha poll is any indication, she is stepping up to the microphone. With the second round of the presidential elections slated for this Sunday, October 29, following three televised debates between the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party and Geraldo Alckmin of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, the DataFolha poll shows President Lula with a commanding 21-point lead and the highest presidential approval ratings since 1990 when this poll first began.
Even if the Alckmin campaign and Veja magazine are able to detonate another revelation of electoral mismanagement and malfeasance by the Workers Party in the coming days, president Lula and his portly electoral coalition will listen to the hegemonic chorus of those millions of marginal and working poor Brazilians who have found their voice and are voting for what they want: the Brasília consensus. With all due respect to Gerald Alckmin's efforts to make this presidential contest meaningful, most voters are lining up to endorse the classical recipe for sustainable democratic capitalism, a class compromise engineered to grow the economy while redistributing income to the majority of voters and citizens. Lula and the Workers Party learned this lesson in 1993 while leading the early presidential polls, only to be overtaken by then Minister of the Economy, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his innovative Plano Real. Lesson learned, during the 2002 campaign candidate Lula offered Brazilians and the world a committed effort to preserve and solidify economic stability, guide a new cycle of economic growth, and set up the institutional foundations for sustained income redistribution, the key pillars to what Vinod Thomas and David de Ferranti of the World Bank refer to as the Brasília consensus (http://www.obancomundial.org/index.php?actionfiltered=/content/view_artigo&cod_object=1831). It is not surprising that Lula and the Workers Party have toiled over the past decade to become the anchor of a fat, hegemonic vessel of Brazilians, urban and rural, worker and industrialist, women and men, rich and poor, that want stability, controlled growth, and social policies geared to reverse the perverse, entrenched legacy of extreme human exploitation that has ruled politics and culture in Brazil for 500 years. What is surprising about the presidential election of 2006 is that the campaign of Geraldo Alckmin, the PSDB and their right wing partner, the Liberal Front Party, did not even try to convince a majority of Brazilians that they care as much about injustice and inequality as President Lula and his governing coalition. Rather, the center-right campaign placed all its bets on a series of media hyped scandals that reveal limited malfeasance on the part of some leading members of the Workers Party. These scandals are disturbing and certainly slow down the implementation of the Brasília consensus, but they pale in scope to the escapades of prior administrations. In fact, Candidate Alckmin's reliance on the corruption charge only reminds voters of the swell in public debt following President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's privatization campaign of the 1990s. Where did all that money go? There may have been sound fiscal reasons for selling off state owned enterprises, but neither Alckmin or former President Cardoso have successfully explained why public debt grew as Brazil sold off a slew of asset rich and revenue generating enterprises. Without a clear explanation, Alckmin's corruption charges do not have wings.. While both the PSDB and the PFL will continue to win elections here and there, they run the increasing risk of flying coach as the Workers Party and its allies pilot a stable flight plan with both wings, economic growth and income redistribution, fully extended. The most important question is not so much when the fat lady sings, but where will the pilots of the Brasília consensus take Brazil in the coming years, what are the main challenges and how will they be overcome? The Lula government has parlayed economic stability into a strategically orchestrated movement to reinsert Brazil into the global economy as an influential world trader and political leader. While the former labor movement leader cannot take all the credit, it is not coincidental that under his helm the nation's private sector is exporting at historic rates. President Lula, Foreign Relations Minister Celso Amorim, and Minister of Economic Development and Commerce, Fernando Furlan, have succeeded in opening and expanding markets for Brazilian goods around the world while protecting the nation against the unfair, and at times, predatory commercial policies of the European Union and the United States. The fact that Brazil's trade with the U.S. will achieve a record surplus in 2006 only underlines the point that the Lula government is successfully navigating the perilous straits of economic globalization, giving up little for its increasing access to global markets for commodities and manufactured goods. With such record trade surpluses who needs the Free Trade in the Americas Agreement (FTAA)? Yet, it is precisely this success that may pose the biggest challenge in the long run as Brazilians become increasingly divided between those that work for the global economy and those who must survive it. It is almost too obvious that candidate Alckmin's most loyal bases of support come from the well educated, technologically savvy, private sector professionals who congregate in São Paulo's international firms. Aside from their employers, recent research suggests that these private sector, white collar workers are the largest beneficiaries of Brazil's world trader status. Contrary to the predictions of classical economic theory; suggesting that Brazil's poorly paid workforce would attract greater investment in labor intensive production activities; private capital investment has rushed toward those small segments of the workforce who add great value through capital intensive, high technology production. How can the Lula government continue to encourage and facilitate such investment while also seeking to create many more jobs for the lesser skilled and the ranks of young Brazilians who will enter the labor market in the coming four years? The balance of evidence indicates that the Lula government has improved the public sector's capacity to value work, largely through institutional measures to insure that workers can effectively seek the formal status that avails them to basic labor rights, including the minimum wage and modest retirement benefits. The government has led congress to pass several minimum wage increases, lifting its real purchasing power over twenty five percent in the last four years. Also, more and more workers enjoy the benefits accrued by the government's insistence that employers' sign the "carteira do trabalho," bringing scores of mostly younger workers into the formal labor force. Yet, the long term challenges go well beyond these necessary, but insufficient efforts... at some point President Lula must make tough choices about how best to prepare Brazilians to fly the Brasília consensus toward prosperity, rather than just away from poverty. There are some encouraging signs. President Lula's personal leadership on the development and production of biofuels, especially ethanol and increasingly biodiesel, provides an environmentally sound structure for creating jobs and expanding sustainable economic development. These efforts are likely to pay big dividends for workers, consumers, investors and the government in the coming years. But it will not be enough to incorporate all Brazilian workers into the formal labor market. To lower unemployment and help young Brazilians learn to surf the wave of economic globalization, the second Lula administration must concentrate efforts on developing an effective flight plan to steer the Brasília consensus toward a reversal in educational fortunes. Geraldo Alckmin is right to criticize Lula for the turnaround in Ministers of Education during the past four years. Certainly the lack of leadership in this all important ministry has jeopardized the effective implementation of the Workers Party's well conceived plan to strengthen public primary and secondary education throughout the country. It is unfortunate that former Minister of Education and presidential candidate, Cristovam Buarque, fell out of favor early on. His passion and expertise is precisely what Brazil needs to make the revolution in education. President-elect Lula should carefully consider Cristovam's ten point plan, published in Brazil Magazine, to carry out the "revolution of the pencil," (see http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/9725/78/). Lula should move quickly to nominate a powerful Minister of Education capable of co-piloting the Brasília consensus toward the higher altitudes of the global economy. This means making hard choices that redistribute public resources from the federal universities to the public schools that serve a majority of Brazilians. For President Lula, it may be the most important decision of his second term. For now, let the fat lady sing! PSDB - www.psdb.org.br
PT - www.pt.org.br
PFL - www.pfl.org.br
Veja - http://vejaonline.abril.com.br
DataFolha - http://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br Mark S. Langevin, Ph.D. is a political scientist who researches and writes on United States-Brazil relations. He is a Strategic Analyst for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and serves as National Organizer for the Brazil Strategy Network. He can be reached at
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Thanks but no thanks, Bush, the north american baboon!